From Zendaya To Dwayne Johnson: 10 Celebrities On Their Struggles With Mental Health For #WorldMentalHealthDay

How Celebrities Have Talked Publicly About Their Struggles With Mental Health

There’s still a stigma when it comes to having, talking about, and dealing with mental health issues–but the more we normalize that, the easier it will be for all of us who continue to suffer from issues like anxiety, depression, and more. Over the past few years, celebrities have really started to open up about their own personal struggles with mental health, which gives fans someone to look up to and relate to when it comes to their own hardships.

In honor of #WorldMentalHealthDay, here’s how 10 celebrities talk about their own mental health and how it’s affected them.

Kanye West

“This is like a sprained brain, like having a sprained ankle. And if someone has a sprained ankle, you’re not going to push on him more,” Kanye Told David Letterman. “Once our brain gets to the point of spraining, people do everything to make it worse.” He spoke about his diagnosis more with Real 92.3’s Big Boy after the release of his album Ye, saying, “I had never been diagnosed until I was like 39 years old. But like I said on the album, it’s not a disability, it’s a superpower.”

Zendaya

“Even though Euphoria coming out was amazing and exciting, it was also extremely stressful. It gave me a lot of anxiety every week,” Zendaya told Elle in an interview this week. “That’s something I deal with; I have anxiety. I already know after this interview is over, I’m going to spiral about it for weeks.”

Halle Berry

“I was sitting in my car, and I knew the gas was coming when I had an image of my mother finding me,” Halle told Parade magazine about contemplating suicide following her divorce. “She sacrificed so much for her children, and to end my life would be an incredibly selfish thing to do. It was all about a relationship. My sense of worth was so low.”

Kid Cudi

“For a long time, I was not happy when I woke up in the morning. Just being like, ‘why don’t I feel okay?’ I thought maybe it was stress. At that point, I was doing an album every year, so I thought maybe I was overdoing it and I needed to take a break. It took me a minute to realize there was something going wrong with me,” Cudi said on Red Table Talk. “I was really good at keeping my troubles hidden, even from my friends. I really was good with that. And it’s scary because you hear people say, ‘I had no clue.’”

Nicki Minaj

“It was just one dead end after another,” Nicki told Cosmo in 2017. “At one point, I was, like, ‘What would happen if I just didn’t wake up?’ That’s how I felt. Like, ‘Maybe I should just take my life?’”

Beyonce

“It was beginning to get fuzzy―I couldn’t even tell which day or which city I was at. I would sit there at ceremonies and they would give me an award and I was just thinking about the next performance,” Beyonce told The Sun back in 2011. “My mother was very persistent and she kept saying that I had to take care of my mental health.”

Michelle Williams

“When I disclosed it to our manager at the time, bless his heart, he was like, ‘Y’all just signed a multimillion-dollar deal and you’re about to go on tour. What do you have to be depressed about?’ So I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I’m just tired,’” Michelle said, revealing the depression she experienced during her time with Destiny’s Child on an appearance on CBS’s The Talk. “I was to that place where it got so dark and heavy, because sometimes you feel like, ‘I’m the provider, I take care of people. I’m not supposed to be feeling this way. What do I do?’ And I wanted out.”

Chrissy Teigen

“I also just didn’t think it could happen to me. I have a great life. I have all the help I could need: John, my mother (who lives with us), a nanny. But postpartum does not discriminate,” Chrissy wrote in an essay for Glamour. “I couldn’t control it. And that’s part of the reason it took me so long to speak up: I felt selfish, icky, and weird saying aloud that I’m struggling. Sometimes I still do.”

Dwayne Johnson

“I found that, with depression, one of the most important things you could realize is that you’re not alone,” Dwayne said in Oprah’s Master Class. “You’re not the first to go through it; you’re not going to be the last to go through it. And oftentimes—it happens—you just feel like you’re alone. You feel like it’s only you. You’re in your bubble. And I wish I had someone at that time who could just pull me aside and [say], ‘Hey, it’s gonna be OK. It’ll be OK.’ So, I wish I knew that.”

Mariah Carey

“I didn’t want to carry around the stigma of a lifelong disease that would define me and potentially end my career. I was so terrified of losing everything,” Mariah told People Magazine. “I’m hopeful we can get to a place where the stigma is lifted from people going through anything alone. It can be incredibly isolating. It does not have to define you and I refuse to allow it to define me or control me.”